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Goodbye
The days are numbered of two major companies currently on tour: the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, with another two years to go, and Pina Bausch’s Wuppertal Tanztheater, set to fold after receiving an endowment in August for the purpose of storing Bausch’s estate in an archive for research into dance theater. Merce Cunningham requested that his work only be danced by students of his New York dance school after his death. His foundation is currently trying to raise eight million dollars to make a digital inventory of his over 200 choreographies, just as Jo Ann Endicott, Barbara Kaufmann and Benedicte Billiet are already doing with Pina Bausch’s work in Hombroich Palace near Neuss.Merce Cunningham wanted to be spared the fate of an ‘estate company’ like that of Alvin Ailey, José Limón or Martha Graham. He refused to bequeath his work to anyone. And Pina Bausch said, “When you start thinking about your legacy, you die”. She and Cunningham shared this view.
The archiving work that is now beginning is an attempt to prevent the voices of these two great dance-makers from fading away. But they themselves knew that most efforts to continue a signature form of dance theater or to move like an idol can only result in, at best, an imitation of great art. Cunningham permitted this translation of his art as ‘technique’ only. To Pina Bausch, “the simple had long since become the most difficult”, as Wim Wenders said at her funeral on 4 September in Wuppertal. In her deep mistrust of the language at her disposal, she “sometimes agonized over trying to say something which was quite simple, but actually not.” The art of both these choreographers stemmed from a need to show the seemingly simple via the complicated instrument of the body. That requires a need and a body. But neither can be passed on.
The ballet-tanz editors
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